Policy —

Ousted RegisterFly CEO regains reins of company

The RegisterFly saga took a surprising turn when a federal judge gave control …

In a surprising move, US District Court Judge Peter Sheridan gave control of embattled domain name registrar RegisterFly back to ousted Unified Names CEO Kevin Medina. Judge Sheridan ruled that Medina is the "sole shareholder" of the company and that the transfer of the stock of parent company Unified Names to John Naruszewicz, who had taken over the CEO role from Medina, was "null and void." Medina had been fired by the other board members on February 12 and was subsequently sued by Unified Names, the parent company of RegisterFly.

The judge's move marks the latest event in the ongoing RegisterFly saga. The company has been beset with financial difficulties, and ultimately allowed 75,000 of its customers' domain names to expire despite repeated requests to renew and/or transfer them. RegisterFly laid the blame at Medina's feet, accusing him of misappropriating company funds for escort services and liposuction, among other things. Upon being fired, Medina reportedly deleted some passwords and killed access to the billing records, further complicating matters.

The mess at RegisterFly also caught ICANN's attention. The regulatory body has accused RegisterFly of blocking repeated requests to transfer domain names, despite an agreement to do so within five days of the request. ICANN is also aware of other issues at RegisterFly, including the alteration of some WHOIS entries to show Kevin Medina as the owner of a domain, rather than its rightful owner.

Late last month, ICANN issued a letter demanding that RegisterFly "act promptly" to clean up its mess. In a statement issued after Judge Sheridan's decision was announced, ICANN said that regardless of who is running RegisterFly, the problems users are experiencing need to be fixed. "ICANN has demanded that RegisterFly immediately act to provide authorization codes and has also demanded a meeting with RegisterFly (and other relevant parties that are assisting ICANN) to resolve RegisterFly's reported failures," said ICANN. "We will provide an update on the outcome of this meeting."

ICANN also confirmed that it has received registrant data from RegisterFly as demanded, but that it is still checking the data's accuracy.

Medina has already assumed control of the company from Naruszewicz, who had taken over as CEO after Medina's ouster. The court fight is likely over at this point, as Naruszewicz told BusinessWeek that he is throwing in the towel. "We lost and it's all over," Naruszewicz said. "The company will implode in days and 1 million domain names are going to be lost. It's a damned shame."

While RegisterFly's future is up in the air, ICANN's actions should ensure that the 75,000 or so customers who have lost control of their domain names will ultimately regain it—assuming that it can reassemble the pieces from RegisterFly's data.

Eric Bangeman
Eric has been using personal computers since 1980 and writing about them at Ars Technica since 2003, where he currently serves as Managing Editor. Twitter@ericbangeman